Top positive review

It only took a few pages to know that I was reading an unknown, forgotten masterpiece. The writing is incredibly beautiful, the kind that is so smooth, so fluid, that you forget you are even reading, reaching straight into the heart of the matter. Stoner has become one of my favourite book of all times. It seems slightly incredible that such a good book could be about the very uneventful, sad life of a professor in an American university. You follow Stoner from his young years as a student and farmer, right up to his death, married, with an estranged daughter and a half-failed career behind him. It is somehow difficult to say how fascinating, gripping this book is, but it is. Stoner struggles to affirm himself as a formidable intellectual that he is in his field, because he is so self-effacing, so humble of character. You really wish him to take a more vigorous stand against his dreadful colleague who will undermine and ruin his whole life eventually. But at work like at home, with his very demanding, difficult wife, Stoner always chooses the path of least resistance, and lets his life ebb away...This attitude becomes near unbearable for the reader when it comes to the love of his life and yet again... He is a maddening character yet so real that you love him and desperately want him to be happy. There is certainly a lot of Stoner in us and why his story is so moving, so affecting. It also talks of an attitude to life that is the complete opposite of what we want now. It is about a very quiet character, and an inner life that does not need outside validations. It is about valuing the life of the mind above all else, even if it means renouncing happiness in other ways. It is about avoiding confrontations with loved ones even if it means giving-up your own rights. Stoner really is a great, great story, with a deep flamboyance, resonance very few novels possess. To read and to cherish.

Top critical review

Am I the only reader who wanted to give William Stoner a resounding slap?

He becomes infatuated with, and pursues, a woman who appears to be clinically depressed, with possibly a range of additional mental health problems. She subsequently makes his life a misery. And he lets her. He is bullied at work and fails to achieve his full potential. He falls in love, but of course the mad wife proves a bit of an obstacle (among other things). I wish someone would do for Edith what Jean Rhys did for Bertha Mason in Wide Sargosso Sea. John McGahern writes tellingly in the introduction, 'Stoner's wife is a type that can be glimpsed in much American writing, through such different sensibilities as O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald - beautiful, unstable, educated to observe the surfaces of a privileged and protected society - but never can that type of wife have been revealed as remorselessly as here.'

Hmm, common thread here. Cold-hearted shallow women all written by men. No slight on the brilliant McGahern who created memorable and very moving three-dimensional female characters. No wonder he seems to see these 'types' as an alien species from across the Atlantic.

Stoner's stoicism (passivity?) is sometimes irritating but it goes beyond that when he lets his beloved daughter go to the wall, Philip Larkin style. He is too weak to intervene in Edith's systematic campaign to ruin Grace's life, seeing himself powerless to act in the face of his wife's manipulative behaviour. Powerless? Man up, Stoner. Get with the Patriarchy! Read the Women's Room, The Yellow Wallpaper. You have power in this marriage. Wield some of it to salvage your daughter's future.

Stoner isn't always such a victim. He has enough initiative to choose a different life than the one he was born into, even though this is bewildering and upsetting for his parents. He fights a few battles with his nemesis at university and has some victories. He even wins the odd skirmish with Edith. But to stand by and watch his only child disintegrate over a sustained period and do nothing was unforgivable: an abdication of moral and parental responsibility.

I have turned this into a dissection of Stoner's character, but that is essentially what the book is about, a candidate perhaps for one of George Eliot's 'those who lived faithfully a hidden life.' John Williams himself describes Stoner as a 'hero.' Not in my book. Ok, I get it: well written; forgotten classic; quiet beauty about the prose etc. I don't feel I can give it less than three stars, but its central premise for me is flawed. I thought the description of the two disabled characters was slightly creepy as well, both twisted in mind as well as body. Sorry to spoil the consensus and most likely upset a few people but I didn't like this book very much at all.

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It only took a few pages to know that I was reading an unknown, forgotten masterpiece. The writing is incredibly beautiful, the kind that is so smooth, so fluid, that you forget you are even reading, reaching straight into the heart of the matter. Stoner has become one of my favourite book of all times. It seems slightly incredible that such a good book could be about the very uneventful, sad life of a professor in an American university. You follow Stoner from his young years as a student and farmer, right up to his death, married, with an estranged daughter and a half-failed career behind him. It is somehow difficult to say how fascinating, gripping this book is, but it is. Stoner struggles to affirm himself as a formidable intellectual that he is in his field, because he is so self-effacing, so humble of character. You really wish him to take a more vigorous stand against his dreadful colleague who will undermine and ruin his whole life eventually. But at work like at home, with his very demanding, difficult wife, Stoner always chooses the path of least resistance, and lets his life ebb away...This attitude becomes near unbearable for the reader when it comes to the love of his life and yet again... He is a maddening character yet so real that you love him and desperately want him to be happy. There is certainly a lot of Stoner in us and why his story is so moving, so affecting. It also talks of an attitude to life that is the complete opposite of what we want now. It is about a very quiet character, and an inner life that does not need outside validations. It is about valuing the life of the mind above all else, even if it means renouncing happiness in other ways. It is about avoiding confrontations with loved ones even if it means giving-up your own rights. Stoner really is a great, great story, with a deep flamboyance, resonance very few novels possess. To read and to cherish.

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I loved this story. A tale of a life lived flat but told with such internal depth and subtle emotion. It deals effortlessly with the layers of deceit and self-deceit that sometimes exist in relationships - particularly 'public' relationships - and the creeping discomfort that comes with understanding that life is short and it often belongs to other people. It is sad. But not depressingly so. Our hero, Stoner, could have made other choices - he just didn't.

I finished it this morning, buried my head in my pillow and cried a bit. I realise that I will miss William Stoner. Technically, I spent only two days with him but I felt the whole life of the character. This is one that will keep flooding back.

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Stoner is the story of an inconsequential man, the author tells us so right at the start, then proceeds to prove himself wrong. Even the "smallest" existence can be so full of life, so full of meaning, Williams seems to be saying.

John Stoner grows up dirt poor but discovers a passion for literature and becomes a teacher at Columbia University. The book chronicles university life and politics, love, marriage and parenthood and finally, the thoughts a man has as he prepares himself for departure from this world.

The book is very quiet and elegantly written. It is also profoundly sad. At every turn, Stoner is denied happiness, and yet he faces every situation with integrity and stoicism, like his farmer parents. Life is endured, not enjoyed.

"...within a month he knew that his marriage was a failure; within a year he stopped hoping that it would improve. He learned silence and did not insist upon his love."

For all it's sadness, the book is strangely compelling. Williams' insights into the working of human relationships are timeless. And his eloquent prose is an absolute pleasure to read and has a poignancy that I found deeply moving.

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It's great to have Stoner back in print in the UK, along with Augustus, both with wonderful new introductions. It's been 30 years since I first read Stoner and reading it again for the third or fourth time I can only confirm that the novel more than stands the test of time. It is a story of an honest man, of personal integrity in the face of considerable obstacles. Very few contemporary novels have moved me to the same extent or depth as this one. C.P. Snow in a review of the first British edition asked the question, "Why is this novel not famous?" Why not, indeed.

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The first two paragraphs of this novel summarise the unremarkable life of William Stoner, and the rest of the book gives the details of this unremarkable man, unhappily married, a failure in his career, with an alcoholic daughter. But he dies content and fulfilled, and remarkably the reader comes to believe that this is richly deserved. His is an examined life, and his failures and a few small successes add up to a rich and profound existence. I have absolutely no idea how the author conjures up so much from such apparently sterile material, but he does, and it is a masterpiece.

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Am I the only reader who wanted to give William Stoner a resounding slap?

He becomes infatuated with, and pursues, a woman who appears to be clinically depressed, with possibly a range of additional mental health problems. She subsequently makes his life a misery. And he lets her. He is bullied at work and fails to achieve his full potential. He falls in love, but of course the mad wife proves a bit of an obstacle (among other things). I wish someone would do for Edith what Jean Rhys did for Bertha Mason in Wide Sargosso Sea. John McGahern writes tellingly in the introduction, 'Stoner's wife is a type that can be glimpsed in much American writing, through such different sensibilities as O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald - beautiful, unstable, educated to observe the surfaces of a privileged and protected society - but never can that type of wife have been revealed as remorselessly as here.'

Hmm, common thread here. Cold-hearted shallow women all written by men. No slight on the brilliant McGahern who created memorable and very moving three-dimensional female characters. No wonder he seems to see these 'types' as an alien species from across the Atlantic.

Stoner's stoicism (passivity?) is sometimes irritating but it goes beyond that when he lets his beloved daughter go to the wall, Philip Larkin style. He is too weak to intervene in Edith's systematic campaign to ruin Grace's life, seeing himself powerless to act in the face of his wife's manipulative behaviour. Powerless? Man up, Stoner. Get with the Patriarchy! Read the Women's Room, The Yellow Wallpaper. You have power in this marriage. Wield some of it to salvage your daughter's future.

Stoner isn't always such a victim. He has enough initiative to choose a different life than the one he was born into, even though this is bewildering and upsetting for his parents. He fights a few battles with his nemesis at university and has some victories. He even wins the odd skirmish with Edith. But to stand by and watch his only child disintegrate over a sustained period and do nothing was unforgivable: an abdication of moral and parental responsibility.

I have turned this into a dissection of Stoner's character, but that is essentially what the book is about, a candidate perhaps for one of George Eliot's 'those who lived faithfully a hidden life.' John Williams himself describes Stoner as a 'hero.' Not in my book. Ok, I get it: well written; forgotten classic; quiet beauty about the prose etc. I don't feel I can give it less than three stars, but its central premise for me is flawed. I thought the description of the two disabled characters was slightly creepy as well, both twisted in mind as well as body. Sorry to spoil the consensus and most likely upset a few people but I didn't like this book very much at all.

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It's appropriate somehow that this American novel is in-print in England, because it's so unlike most fiction America produces: it's quiet, somber, compact and gracefully written, thoroughly unhip and un-modern. It is a simple tale about a somewhat banal English professor in the midwest whose life just sort of floats by him. The prose is rich and terse, never ostentatious, and for a novel whose setpieces occur mostly in an academic setting, it's utterly engrossing. Williams writes with humanity and insight about relatively normal people we would pass by in the street, and in being so faithful to their aches and appetites, he convinces you -- like all good fiction from Homer to Tolstoi -- that these are real human beings you're reading about. Nothing less than extraordinary. Please buy this book!

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Stoner is in each of us, and each of us is in Stoner.From the outside he is an ordinary, anonymous man; indistinguishable from thousands – millions – of others. He lives an unremarkable life and dies, and nobody remembers him, much.And yet inside, inside, Stoner’s life is a diorama, as ours is; a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting granules, some dull, some sharp, others iridescent. Within the little landscape of his life is a vista of hopes and dreams, a reality of drudge, moments of soaring passion and elevation of the soul, periods of disillusionment which is almost despair. Professionally, he has times of fulfilment, also sloughs of disenchantment. Often he takes the line of least resistance but sometimes he digs his heels in and refuses to budge. He has those occasional infinitesimal shifts of self-awareness and understanding which connect him for brief, glorious moments to himself, to others and to the world. But for the most part he exists in the semi-gloom of half-consciousness, extended periods of absent-mindedness and inattention which cause him to miss out on the mountain-peak moments which would have stayed with him to the grave and which, in the end, cause him to label his life as a failure.Stoner’s is a passive life – rarely is he proactive in his own fate - taking what comes at him with a stoic resignation; he is no hero, but he has a quiet honour. He makes wrong choices, living to regret the choices but embracing the consequences of them all the same, so that we can only admire the waste in spite of ourselves.Am I not describing us all?John Williams uses Stoner’s ordinary, extra-ordinary life to explore the enormous gulfs which exist between what we see and what we understand, and between what we understand and our ability to express it. It is literature – a Shakespearian sonnet about death – which awakens Stoner from an almost insensate state to emotional life. Up to that point he is described in terms of the dead, dry earth; he is grey and brown, he is hard and calloused, he moves like an automaton feeding sheep and ploughing fields, he attends his classes and completes his assignments but his mind is not touched and his heart remains cold.Then, an epiphany. The meaning of Shakespeare’s words pierces his understanding; not just their literal meaning but their emotional, their spiritual significance. And he is completely, utterly unable to articulate a word of his revelation. Likewise in his marriage to Edith, the sudden drench of love he feels can find no expression in his mouth. The equally crushing realisation, when it comes, that his marriage is a failure, goes unexpressed and undiscussed. Only sometimes, in his classes, absorbed by his subject and almost released from the corporeality of himself, can what he sees, what he knows and what he says come together, leaving his students breathless and inspired.Williams’ depiction of the world is nuanced and multi-faceted. Often his descriptions are made up of juxtapositions; contradictory and confusing, but, then, isn’t life? When is anything simply and only one thing? Any stone, when lifted and examined closely, will be found to be much more than plain unrelieved, unremarkable grey; it will have sparkle and colour and texture. And within – who knows what treasure, what mystery, what history it might contain?

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Our house is full of books. My wife is an avid reader - I was, but am not anymore, tending to find my busy life and increasing age prefers the short attention span reading of magazines, the easy entertainment of the telly, or increasingly I simply relax listening to music. Occasionally, a new author will be found that captures my imagination and I will enjoy reading novels once again - Raymond Feist for instance for some pure fantasy escapism, or Ian Banks for some slightly more challenging ordinary fiction - but in general, reading books is not something I do very often these days. So, when my wife put STONER down and said "you must read this" I thought ok, lets take a look at it.

It doesn't sound particularly inspiring. It tells the tale of an fairly ordinary person - Stoner - leading a not particularly eventful life as an English lecturer and assistant professor in a middle-of-nowhere American University. It starts before the first world war and ends with his death in 1956. It doesn't contain the obvious heroes of science fantasy, or the twists and suspense of more normal fiction. It's just his life - personal, work and everything around it. Don't worry, I haven't spoiled the story - the author tells you all this on the first page of the book. Not particularly inspiring.

Don't be mistaken though. This is just so beautifully written, so keenly observed, so evenly paced and so complete, that it might really be THE PERFECT NOVEL. Quite why I say that I don't know; maybe it's the right amount of detail that paints the picture without overdoing it; maybe it's the times Willam's simply cuts to the chase and tells you the outcome in one sentence; maybe it's simply the ordinariness and realness of Stoner; or maybe it's the parallels with the vast majority of us who lead "ordinary" lives. I don't know and I'm not sure I care - it's just the most moving, beautiful book I have ever read. I've never written a book review before and doubt I ever will again, nor do I every think I'll read such a perfect novel.

If you're reading this you must be thinking of buying Stoner - just do it - now.

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I ordered "Stoner" after reading John Williams' masterful book, "Augustus". The books could have been produced by two different authors--the writing is so different. What the works have in common is that their characters are presented in ways that the reader is emotionally hooked and vested pretty much from the first chapters on. The books also share a clarity of language that is rare.

In "Stoner", we are presented with the fictional biography of a man (William Stoner) who would, by many definitions, be deemed a failure. But in the end he isn't. And throughout the chronicle of his life as a university professor and scholar, his considerable personal limitations, poorly informed decisions, lack of street smarts, etc. are not enough to obscure the curious nobility of the man. Above all else, he is dedicated to the profession of teaching. And in this context, he prevails against unpromising family origins, an unwise and very long lasting marriage, a general lack of professional ambition (other than to be a great teacher) and a vicious and unrelenting academic rival. Stoner has moments of triumph and happiness--recognition of his unique teaching skills by his students and a rapturous love affair at mid-life--but they are oases in an otherwise difficult life.

The quality of writing in this book is so good that you have to assume that "Stoner" must be often included in the curricula of modern literature classes. Author Williams' use of descriptive narrative is close to peerless in 20th Century writing and his characters unmatched in effecting response from the reader. With respect to the latter observation, you don't have to go further than the Amazon reviews of the book to see how strongly readers are touched by the story; much of this reaction is fiercely negative, but is rarely indifferent.